When Life Gives You Lemons...

...bend life over and stick those lemons where the sun don't shine.

[Rant Mode ON]
Yesterday, I had some rather insulting news. We had our end-of-year Faculty forum. At this function they tell us what a wonderful Faculty we've been, how awesomely we've served our students and in general they pat us all on the back. This event is also when they announce the winners of the Performance Awards. These awards are given to those staff who have shown excellent performance over the past year. This year, the head of our discipline nominated myself and my assistant for these awards. He's been most pleased with our performance this year and thought we deserved recognition. I felt pretty good when he told us this as its been a tough year and we've still managed to pull through. That was about 3 months ago.

No one finds out if they've won an award until they announce it at the end-of-year forum. Today, they flashed up the names of the winners. I wasn't amongst them. O.K., I can deal with that. My assistant's name was up there. Wait, what? We've been working together on the same projects. I've been doing longer hours and working at least as hard as, if not harder than my assistant has and she gets the award while I miss out!?! I've rearranged my home life to commit to work more, spending less time with my family and getting more stressed than I have been for the last 15 years and apparently I'M the one who is not performing while she IS!?! What the hell is up with that!?! Frankly, I find it highly insulting. I'm pretty angry about the whole thing and if I didn't need the money to support my family, I'd storm into the office on Monday and tell our Dean that he can stick my job where his sun don't shine. How can you possibly award one person for their performance at a set of tasks when their workmate who is not only working along side them but is also supervising them and taking the responsibility for those self-same tasks is not also awarded?

Here, life. Take these here lemons and stick them where your sun doth not shine. I've had it with this cr@p.
[Rant Mode OFF]

Parental Anecdotes 2.0

And yet another blog post proving that I have had my head buried in work and family for such a long time that it’s now September, meaning 6 months have flown by since my last Blog post. Geez. Lots has happened. Work got busy. Alex grew some more and started speech therapy (he has been diagnosed as having Apraxia of speech) and is coming along in leaps and bounds. Tash started a new job. I got all technological and acquired smartphones for Tash and I. Busy, busy, busy life.

But what I wanted to share in this blog post was another joyful moment of parenthood I experienced last night. Alex and Tash went to bed early as they were both exhausted giving me a couple of hours of Peace and Quiet (TM). I watched a movie and then played a game on the ‘puter. Just before I shut the ‘puter off I decided to browse through the folder marked “Alexander”. While trolling through the hundreds of photos of my son I found a folder marked “Playing with the New Camcorder”. I open it to find some AVI files of Alex. In one of them he is “helping” his mother water the garden. What he is actually doing is spraying everything in sight with the hose. At one point he finds the outlet for the downpipe off the shed roof and begins spraying water up the pipe. After a couple of seconds, the water begins to run out again, at which Alex squeals with delight. So he sprays the water again and, after another delay, more water comes out. He’s fascinated. He does this a few more times before the video ends. It was really nice to watch.

I love watching my little boy discover the world. He just finds so much happiness in the simple things and I love sharing it with him, even after the fact.

AMUSING SIDE STORY: Two nights ago I was getting ready for bed when I heard Alex grumbling in his sleep. He’s had some nightmares recently so I thought I’d check on him. As I entered the room he sat up, still sound asleep, and belched rather loudly. After the belching was done, he giggled and proceeded to lie back down as if nothing had happened. All still sound asleep. I had to creep out so I didn’t wake him with my laughter. It still makes me laugh. Heh. THAT’S my boy!

So 20% of 2011 is gone?

Wow. Three months gone. And what a three months it has been. Alex turned two. My wife and I each officially got another year older. We once again celebrated the Christian hijacking of a pagan holiday as well as the turning of the year. I watched as my hometown (Brisbane) flooded to levels last seen when I was just one year old. I’ve been to Melbourne and Canberra (in that order). Alex started at Childcare. Wow. A very busy time. So much has happened it’s hard to know what the most significant event is. I’m thinking its likely best to just leave it there and pick up anew when I get a bit more time to write more.

I’ll write more about the Tigershark conversion I mentioned a while ago along with completed pics as they turned out better than I had feared. Plus they have lights and sounds! Wheee!

But for now, let’s just agree that it’s been a helluva time since I last posted, shall we?

Lighten up, fat boy!

Well, it’s been a while since I updated. Life’s been busy, busy, busy. Work has finally ended its stupid cycle and I have time to turn around and scratch myself. Home life has started to settle a little and I’m hoping that things there are a little less stressful.

And its funny how easily you let the stress get to be too much and not even notice it. As I’ve mentioned before, my outlet is gaming. And last night it really did become my outlet and not in the good way. I was playing a game of Warmachine against Medway. My dice rolls had been average to poor up until my pivotal moment while Medway’s were doing considerably better. Then I reached said pivotal moment and lined up an assassination run on his Warcaster (Strahkov for those in the know) and charged on in with my Stormclad Warjack. I’d loaded it up on focus and ploughed right in (for those who don’t know, killing the Warcaster wins the game for the assassin). I miscalculated a distance calculation in the first instance and thought I’d fallen short but a quick re-measure showed my instincts had been right. I was in range of my target and let fly with the attack. All I needed to hit was an 8. With three dice, that’s fairly sure odds. Not to be though as the dice came up a seven. I swore. So I followed up with a second attack. Hit (barely). Yay. Damage: A paltry 6 (a roll of 3 on two dice plus the bonus). Bah! That was the last straw. My temper snapped and I threw the offending dice across the man-cave. What I thought was a pretty sure thing wound up as a botched attempt. In the end, I managed to win but the failed initial assassination run had left a bad taste in my mouth.

Later, lying in bed, I reflected on just how stupid and petty it was. It’s just a freakin’ game. Sure, my life hasn’t been going according to plan right now but still, it’s a just a game. I really need to lighten up and get over these outbursts. I can lose my temper very quickly over petty things and I need to try and reign that in. I don’t want my son to wind up with a short temper thanks to my example. So here and now I apologise to Medway for my poor sportsmanship. You’re a great sport and a great opponent. Thanks for the game and your patience.

On the plus side I do feel better now...